Get uses the art and science of phonetics to index your FCP project. Even though it's still in beta and won't be out until July, it appears to be at least as accurate if not more so than the similar speech to text option in Adobe Premiere CS5.
Final Cut Studio Maintenance Pack - the mother of all Final Cut Studio utilities. And this interview with Pro Video Coalition is also very insightful regarding the causes and solutions for common FCP errors and general wonkiness.
FinalCutters now has the first ever comprehensive directory of Final Cut Pro related products.
MediaMover FCP - now has a version for FCP after being exclusive for Avid! Woo! This software will be a lifesaver in helping you manage the vast amount of media associated with your Final Cut Pro projects.
UseFXScript to create your own Final Cut Pro transitions and filters.
quickFX palette - for After Effects.
There is a great 3-part series on Adobe TV about how to create and animate custom lower thirds in Adobe CS4.
Reflection Plug-In is a free AE plug-in for quickly creating the object reflection that Apple popularized with it's iTunes store.
Zorro the Layer Tagger makes selection and isolation sets easy and possible in After Effects by adding tags to layers. Similar to the way you would tag photos in Flickr, you can tag layers in your comps and then select or isolate those layers in groups by using the tags.
Scopo Giglio Scopo Gigio is a full-featured video waveform monitor and vectorscope plugin for Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects.
Creative Cow contributing editor Eran Stern Creative Cow demonstrates how to create a jumpy and squishy animation using the power of expressions. If you find that you enjoy doing expressions then check out the one and only Dan Ebberts's site for a comprehensive tour of AE expressions and scripting.
Avid's cloud-based editing demo
Smoke on OS X. - the clearinghouse on information and resources about Autodesk Smoke on a Mac.
Turbo Squid is a 3D model library where you can find thousands of objects for 3ds Max, Lightwave, C4D, and Maya.
The CG channel has seen the future of magazine ads and it is interactive. Will this translate to more jobs for content creators? Time will tell but the wheels are in motion.
And increasingly it looks like more than just a distribution tool, the iPad can be used in production as well. Editor Chris Fenwick explores how the iPad can be used as a camera monitor. I've been waiting for this workflow since the iPad was first announced.
Gradiest - the first Multi-Touch Color Correction app for the iPad
Apple Screen Recording Tools - I use Snapz Pro X but almost any of these will work
VeriCoder - a video editing app for the iPhone. (3GS model and up only)
Monle - a four track, non-linear audio editor for the iPhone and iPod touch.
Dream - allows the user to design a poster, write an outline and create storyboards without knowing how to draw. Can't decide between this and Cinemek? Get 'em both.
Wish you could see more info about a file when you click CMD+i? Well, with MediaInfo Mac - you can.
Sonicfire Pro - scoring software designed for video editors
FreeSound - a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds.
Tired of the cookie-cutter sound effects in Soundtrack Pro? Well, make your own with SFX Machine RT And definitely check out the interactive SFX Machine Simulator- it's hilarious.
CCMixter - - a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.
Sound Dogs - the premiere online source for sound effects, production music, sound clips, free sound effects samples and loops.
Albatat Muse - a one stop solution for creating original, royalty-free soundtracks that are perfectly timed to your edited video.
Find Sounds - Search the Web for Sounds
Audio Jungle - buy and Download Royalty Free Music Loops and Sound Effects.
A few resources covering audio compression:
Audio Compression 101
Compression Master Class (this is a .pdf)
General Mixing Techniques - Using Compression
Organizing and Archiving Your FCP Projects
Last Pass - a password manager that lets you create one password to rule them all.
FCP Bin Structure Template
Finder Folder Structure Template
Keyboard Manifesto - Change your default FCP (or any other) keyboard for more efficient editing.
Sitting in the Mix Audio post-production tips geared toward video editors.
Backupify - provides daily automatic backups, archiving, and export of Gmail, Google Docs, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and many other services.
50 Totally Free Lessons in Graphic Design Theory.
Archiving for Indies:
Creating Long-Term Archives for Independent Digital Cinema
Design Thinking Mindsets, Modes and Methods. Some tools and techniques found in a free download from the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, aka “the d.school.”
Basic Back Up Strategy
Back Up System Configurations
Data Backup Checklist
RV is an image and sequence viewer for VFX and animation artists combined with a flexible and scalable web-based project management system designed for digital production studios. They promise to make it fast and easy for content creators to track, organize, play, and review their work. Legendary studios like WETA and Aardman have been using expensive versions of this for years but now a lot more people are going to be able to get in on the action. With license configurations ranging between $200 - $400 this is poised to take the middle market by storm.
Damage - a plug-in that helps you Deface, Defile, Dismantle and Destroy your footage. Works in multiple programs.
Twitch - a Plug-in for After Effects that synchronizes random operators to create stylistic video effects for motion graphics and visual effects.
FieldsKit - a plug-in suite for deinterlacing, reinterlacing and doing pulldown on your source footage.
exceLogger for FCP - Unleash the power of Excel for Final Cut Pro logging
Official Trapcode Suite Training View them on-line or download them for free. Finally!
Nodes - offers editors and Motion graphics artists a unique tool to combine text and graphics into beautiful 3D animations.
Alexa - Arri's challenge to RED.
Panascout - an iPhone app that simulates the cinematographer's viewpoint from a professional cinema camera.
EOS Movie Plugin-E1 - Canon's DSLR plug-in for Final Cut Pro's log and transfer tool.
Check out Borrow Lenses where you can rent cameras and lenses by the week - on the cheap.
25+ Free Vector World Maps
A huge library of free Photoshop brushes and patterns
Qvecors - free quality vector graphics
What the Font. - Upload an image that contains the font in question and using its vast font database it will analyze the image and produce several fonts that it thinks could be a match. It's been a lifesaver.
CG Textures. - the world's largest 3D textures site.
Free 3D. - Free noncommercial 3D model library.
Stock.XCHNG. - now owned by Getty Images, this may be the largest library of free photos on the web (400,000 at last count).
Wikimedia Commons. - a database of almost 7 million freely usable media files.
BuZZdex. a resource database on Larry Jordan's site that displays articles, forums, tutorials and other resources for over 100 video, audio, VFX and animation applications.
Simple Timecode Calculator
Virtual Color Wheel
100% Free Commercial Fonts
Of all the things that Avatar launched - from renewed interest in 3D to virtual actors - one issue that has received the least amount of press has been it's role in advocacy for VFX artists. On Feb. 5 VFX artist Lee Stranahan wrote an open letter to James Cameron in the hope that he would use his Oscar platform to speak out about the injustices in the VFX industry. Unfortunately, Avatar lost the major awards it was up for and Cameron did not have a chance to speak. But that has not stopped Stranahan from moving forward by calling attention to the many problems facing the VFX industry. He organized a VFX Townhall - with a panel that included representatives from artistic, facility and studio camps. It was very informative and Motionographer has posted a recap and links.- FX Guide's Jeff Heusser analyzes how the townhall went and possible solutions have already surfaced. A Blog to discuss the formation of a VFX digital artists guild has even been started. But what has been the most illuminating information so far is a post by industry VFX veteran Scott Squires on his blog Effects Corner. In it, he gives detailed insider information that reveals the complex issues and huge challenges that face the industry. What lies ahead will undoubtedly be a lot of hand-ringing over changing extremely entrenched practices and heading off new threats to the stability of the VFX industry - namely outsourcing. Improvements in network infrastructure and aggressive tax incentives have decentralized the production of VFX and has become a hot button topic everywhere. The comments posted to Creative Cow's article on World Sourcing by Golden Compass post-supervisor Mike Fink show how intense this debate has become. I'll keep you posted on ongoing developments. In the meantime, if you are a freelancer you may want to check out the Thinking Animation Blog that posted a good article on Protecting Yourself as Freelancer. According to fxdag.org it’s a good basic primer for how Employers of Record work.
Philip Hodgetts asks Why are most production workflows inefficient?. Great post. great comments.
The Myth of DPI. - is an excellent and long overdue article that should be required reading for both creatives and clients.
The new Light Peak technology that I wrote about back in December 2009 is making news again. Recently, Intel gave a demo of the fiber optic technology at at an industry trade show in Brussels. Light Peak promises at least 10Gbit/s in and out of computers and Intel's chief CTO "expects that number to increase dramatically over the next year with almost no limit to bandwidth potential". It will supposedly be available to manufacturers by the end of 2010. There's even speculation that it will overtake the soon to be new standard of USB 3.0 that is already shipping.
Goodbye HDMI - Hello HDBaseT! Let the war between HDBaseT and Light Peak commence.